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Be Like a Cockroach.

by Tony Chung on January 28, 2011

Bruce Lee once said “be the water”.

If you’re an entrepreneur, I say be like a cockroach.

Yes cockroaches are tiny little creatures, BUT they’ve expanded to 4,500 different species (according to Wikipedia) and have been existent all over the world for a very long, long time. They’re also damn hard to kill and pretty much impossible to wipe out.

Here are some notable …respectable… characteristics of cockroaches (passages from Wikipedia):

They’re all about teamwork:

Research has shown that group-based decision-making is responsible for complex behavior such as resource allocation. In a study where 50 cockroaches were placed in a dish with three shelters with a capacity for 40 insects in each, the insects arranged themselves in two shelters with 25 insects in each, leaving the third shelter empty. When the capacity of the shelters was increased to more than 50 insects per shelter, all of the cockroaches arranged themselves in one shelter.

They survive through the harshest situations:

Cockroaches are among the hardiest insects on the planet. Some species are capable of remaining active for a month without food and are able to survive on limited resources like the glue from the back of postage stamps. Some can go without air for 45 minutes. In one experiment, cockroaches were able to recover from being submerged underwater for half an hour.

They’re tough fighters and just won’t take DIE for an answer:

It is popularly suggested that cockroaches will “inherit the earth” if humanity destroys itself in a nuclear war. Cockroaches do indeed have a much higher radiation resistance than vertebrates, with the lethal dose perhaps 6 to 15 times that for humans.

I don’t know about you, but I think every business / entrepreneur should definitely have these three traits.

In the future, if you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve hit a roadblock, just think to yourself…